


War Honey

by KJGooding



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bajoran Culture, Garak Goes to Jail On Purpose, Gen, How many different post canon concepts can I support?, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Recovery, bath scenes are my favorite I can only apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 12:30:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17386514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KJGooding/pseuds/KJGooding
Summary: Garak has rarely understood acts of kindness, especially when others choose to inflict them on him.To learn a long overdue lesson, he seeks out old traps on Bajor, and puts himself intentionally in harm's way.(Mostly Garak and his relationship with Suffering, then slightly his relationship with Bashir)This idea comes from the wonderful Myrida, who suggested Elim not finding absolution until he found a source of real punishment like a labor camp.





	War Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Myrida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myrida/gifts).



After the treaties were signed and the relief centers established - or, 'after all was said and done,' Garak thought, imagining Bashir's voice in his head - _home_ still did not feel quite right.

Home - as it was defined by the station - had forged strange and fulfilling friendships, offered safety and refuge, and given to Garak a comfortable arena for contrition.  But home as it truly was, on Cardassia, was laps behind. When 'all was said and done,' Garak was still very much in pain, as if nothing had been said or done at all.

He passed the relief centers every day on his walking rounds, using them to mark time and distance.  When he went inside, he was met by a young Bajoran, too young to have recalled any meaningful tragic acts of their own planet's Occupation, content to offer their arm to him as he stumbled.  They helped him with filing his paperwork - if he did himself, he might have been _truthful_ in listing his identity and current place of residence and involvement in the war and so on.  But since he had a captive and genuinely well-intentioned audience, he invented an alias, an address, and a complete absence from the Cardassian system during the war.

"I have been our liaison to Vulcan for nearly twenty years - part of the academic exchange," he said.  

The young Bajoran patted his arm, apologizing for the fact he had come _home_ to find only ashes and a long list of casualties in place of a waiting family.  Garak came very close to inventing a missing child, an ailing mother... but he stopped himself and reduced the entire thought to a mere sniffle.  It was too easy.

He was assigned to a block of temporary housing structures, and allotted a weekly care package from the thriving orchards on Bajor.  It was _too easy_ ; it was miserable.

His _home_ , now, was a small, square box of a room, with a curtain to separate his bed from his bath - lending privacy to either one at a time - and a narrow table to separate both of these from his kitchen.  Every object was stamped with a barcode, tying it to either Bajoran or Federation lending programs. Garak felt as though he was in prison.

To make himself feel... less this way, he prescribed two options to himself.  

First, he made an effort to make a home.  He upholstered the bland metal chair and table, stitching vines and flowers with satisfaction over the identification markers.  It was defiant, this small and artful act, even in the waning tides of the war. It was wasteful.

Doing this brought him temporary happiness, and so he looked to expand his services.  Anonymously, he intercepted crates of laundry from the back rooms of the relief centers, and he made them beautiful.  He would sit in the back corner of his _home,_ working diligently with his hand in an embroidery hoop and song in his head.  He scrubbed blood and dirt and ash out of clothing of all sizes, and what he could not remove he masked with decorative thread.  Then he mended the tears - large and small - and rolled the cart back to its point of origin, under cover of nightfall and the thick dust clouds that always accompanied the plummeting of the sun.  

But it was temporary.  Anonymity came naturally to Garak, and he realized along with a wave of nausea that he would never change if he proceeded on his natural course.  He told himself it was natural for him to be secretive and deceitful - he had certainly _not_ been trained to behave that way.  Frowning and pressing his chin dejectedly against his own chest, he thought of a second method: destroy the anonymity.  

He began to speak his own name amongst his neighbors.  He went to the centers in broad daylight and offered his lifetime of acquired trades - gardening, sewing, repairing electronics and other equipment, even listening and writing and reporting potentially hazardous findings.  No one took the bait. He went to sleep and dreamed of being burst in on during the night - he never locked his doors - and beaten by militants and civilians alike, by anyone he had wronged. It was not enough for him to feel pangs of regret, for they only seldom arose, and were immediately washed out by the exhilaration Garak felt alongside pain.  This was not natural; he learned this when his wire was implanted.

Still, he slept restlessly, awaiting the torture and torment of his neighbors.  He wondered if he should move to a different block, one where he _knew_ the inhabitants not solely by their names, but by what horrible suffering his past work had caused them.  He might walk past Gell 'intervened in his only son's court case' Terol on the way to have breakfast, or Lina 'destroyed her research in order to save himself and no one else' Ja'al on his way back home again.  Either of them might attack him. Or, worse, he might pass Natima 'saved her despite being an absurd radical' Lang, or her students... or someone he had genuinely rescued.

It was intolerable.  His mind was busy in ways he wished it was _not,_ and no amount of plain, simple tasks seemed to soothe it.

And so, after months of fruitlessly crossing and re-crossing the line between his two concepts of healing, Garak returned to the first relief center he had visited, where he found the same wide-eyed Bajoran behind the admissions counter.

"Ambassador!" they said, sounding surprised.  "What is it I can help you with, today?"

Garak sighed to himself and leaned with both arms onto the counter, staring directly into the unfortunate young Bajoran's eyes.  

"Where are prisoners-of-war kept," Garak asked, just barely inclining his voice.  

Desperate to break eye contact, the clerk reached to a drawer installed in the desk, where they promised to find a genealogy text.

"If you're looking for a relative, Ambassador... Julen, was it?  If you're looking for a relative, we can start by inputting the base na--"

Garak wanted to laugh, at the recollection he had wistfully given himself Julian's name, adapted for a native tongue, softened by a Bajoran one.  Instead of indulging, he gripped the clerk's shoulders firmly, and waited until their eyes had made their way back to his. They must have been scared; Garak felt sick.

"My people claim to practice discipline and restraint," he said, "but we are all weak to the call of a conflict - we gorge ourselves on it, we drown ourselves in it.  Where are the camps for these criminals?"

"Ambassador, I'm not sure I--"

"Elim Garak," Garak corrected.  "I am one of these criminals, and that is where I wish to go.  Will you tell me where?"

***

The clerk did not tell him, but Colonel Kira did.  He phrased it to her as if she was helping an old friend - a reluctant and strange one, though - to atone.  

"I cannot pray to your prophets for forgiveness," Garak said.  "This is all I know how to do."

Already, Kira had remarked at how unique the situation must have been, for Garak to mention his own suffering in the same breath as an apology.  And, on top of that, for him to call her on an unsecured channel, blatantly providing his identity and location to anyone who might pass the frequency in a routine scan.  

"I need to..." he sighed, but continued, "...admit myself to a prison cell, and remain there.  Surely you wouldn't stand in the way of convicting a Cardassian criminal?"

"Garak," she said, wrinkling her nose partway between a scowl and a gentler, more thoughtful expression, "I think, if you're looking to admit _yourself_ , you don't need to serve a sentence."

"So there _are_ penitentiaries on Bajor."

She was not willing to be caught with a diplomatic secret that easily.

"Not for people like you," she said.  

Again, Garak sighed, and he lifted a PADD into view of her screen, as he skimmed its contents.  When he found what he wanted, he spoke again.

"I seem to recall an incident featuring a perfectly innocent - if inactive - file clerk.  Aamin Marritza?"

"Where did you get that information?" she asked, but the text was too far away for her to read.  Garak very well could have been bluffing, and the fact agitated her. His screen could have been blank, while he went on whistling lies through his teeth, gathering what he wanted from Kira and then terminating the call.

"Constable Odo released a great deal of his incident reports in the interest of general safety," Garak explained.  "The names here are redacted, but it was simple enough for me to figure out, you understand."

Kira frowned but did not interrupt, yet.

"Now," Garak went on, "while I am not suffering that man's disease, I admit I _do_ have the same hereditary predisposition to punish myself for the crimes of others.  And that man was _innocent_ , where I am... not.  You _know_ I am not, Colonel."

"I have no interest in interrogating you, Garak," she said.  "Marritza died at the hand of a Bajoran, and I can almost _promise_ that's what'd happen to you, if you go through with this.  I don't want my name anywhere _near_ that; I don't want that to happen at all."

"You don't want credit for helping an old sinner find repentance?" Garak asked.

"I think you _already have_ , Garak.  I... want you to be safe, I don't want you to hurt yourself, I don't want you coming to Bajor if you're just going to--"

" _Where_ , on Bajor?  I've never understood the Bajoran distaste for public humiliation and punishment.  Is it really more effective your way, Colonel? I want to find out for myself. I want to sit in the darkness."

"Fine.  Rakantha Province.  Happy?"

"You'll hear from me," Garak said, without specifying a time, method, or reason.  He ended the transmission and went, thoroughly agitated, to bed.

***

To get what he wanted, Garak had to learn to tell the truth.

It would have been _simpler_ to lie - to give himself an infamous name, a long and horrifying criminal record, or even to say he was coming to Bajor only to visit an estranged relative - but it would keep him in the same pitiful position for the rest of his life.

He went to Rakantha, and he told the truth.

The admissions officer was confused, but responded positively to the same tactic Garak had taken with Kira - and, this time, he mentioned Kira's name to improve the legitimacy of his claims.  She took Garak's credentials and generated a numerical identity for him, which he wore on a wristband, with the numbers facing outward for easy identification.

"Will I be referred to as _this_ ," Garak asked, nudging his guide, "instead of my own name?"

The officer shook her head, and said a count was kept merely as part of the new treaty with Cardassia.  Prisoners who had served there for years already were also given numbers, and Garak should not have taken it so personally, she said.

"No, that was rather the point," he replied.

Bajorans really were a backward people, Garak thought, as he was led to his quarters.  The cells were roomy - if a tad brighter than he found comfortable - and stocked with a wider bed and thicker set of curtains than he had in his own _home_ , however temporary it was meant to be.  He had tried spending several nights on Tain's property, looking to recreate the effect of incarceration, but it had not felt quite right.

Neither did this, if Garak was _honest_.

"Your schedule will be implemented tomorrow morning... you can find details of it on your computer," the officer explained, inputting a fingerprint to admit Garak to his new cell.  "If you have any questions in the meantime, I can be paged using that button, there, the yellow one."

She gestured to a limited computer panel on the back cell wall, where a yellow button was installed in the very center.  

"Oh, I have several," Garak said, in his most polished, polite tone of voice.  "My understanding of Bajoran law is... outdated, I'm afraid. Are there Opting Trials?"

"Opting?  Where you - well, they all end in execution on Cardassia, don't they? - where you opt for a trial when you can no longer tolerate your sentence?"

Garak gave a curt nod, and the woman immediately shook her head, snorting with distaste.

"No," she said.  "Nothing like that.  You should feel only uncomfortable enough to want to _improve,_ that's our motto here."

"'Dignity from within,'" Garak replied, in a Bajoran dialect he was familiar with, "yes, I've heard that one.  I was... rather under the impression I _needed_ to suffer for my mistakes."

This is Rakantha, he thought, my people burned these buildings and poisoned these plantations only a decade ago.  How have they begun to flourish again, so quickly?

"Officially, I don't approve of the _set'iel_... but that sounds like what you're asking for, Mr. Garak," the officer said brusquely.

"Set'iel..." Garak pronounced the word carefully, letting it drip into the back of his brain.  Slow, sticky, sweet... " _Honeytrap_?  That's the name of a flower of yours, unless I'm very much mistaken.  And of an unsavory backstreet organization."

The officer shook her head - not in denial of Garak's claim, but in frustration he had reached it so easily.

"You have nothing to worry about; I wouldn't let you get caught up in one.  Goodnight, Mr. Garak."

She sealed his cell but carried on the conversation through the gaps in the semi-translucent bars.  This was not a satisfactory answer - it was teasing, and Garak clicked his tongue to recall the officer's attention.

"Why ever not?" he asked.  

"I don't approve of them.  I didn't during the war, and I don't now."

" _I_ approved of them during the War," replied Garak, lending a slight edge to his tone.  "That's precisely why you should allow me into one, now."

"They're different, now.  Unregulated, _illegal_... I don't know exactly what they were like when you went to them--"

"I never did," Garak said truthfully.  "They were tempting, but I would have placed myself in a very dangerous position."

"--they don't trade information anymore, Mr. Garak.  They're terrorists who torture innocent people for intelligence no one needs.  Everything has been placed in the open," she concluded.

"Yes," he said.  "So it has."

He glanced to his cot, then to the computer panel on the wall, then back to the eyes of his gracious host.

"I _do_ appreciate your hospitality, and your determination to preserve my safety - I have not always been so good at that," Garak admitted, in an inflated friendly voice.  "Goodnight to you, as well, Officer...?"

"Chey."

"Officer Chey, thank you.  I'm looking forward to our association."

Because it was warm and the bars were not severely obscuring his vision, Garak slept far more comfortably than he would have liked.

***

Unintentionally, Garak had told Officer Chey a lie: he did not grow to enjoy their association at all.

 _Well_...

He found her companionable enough for an warden's apprentice, if not forthcoming with some of his questions.  It was the atmosphere of the penitentiary itself that Garak found distasteful. The daily procedures were unfulfilling and the entire mood of the place was entirely backward.

Himself and his fellow inmates were treated with decency - the quiet bowing of heads in greetings, patience at meals, distance when being walked from one location to another.  He even found the computer outfitted with enough spare pieces for him to assemble a very basic secondary device, but one he guessed would still be powerful enough to drain the charge from his cell-bars.  It seemed as if they expected - _wanted_ \- him to misbehave.  The task of righting himself came from within, from something the Bajorans called a _pagh_ and the humans called a _conscience_ , and which the Cardassians had no direct translation for.  There was no inner strength without outside factors, as Garak had learned in his youth, and little was happening at the penitentiary that could convince him otherwise.  His theory held its ground, against weak onslaughts including voluntary community service, voluntary religious meetings, _voluntary_ sessions with counselors trained in a variety of discipline.

Nothing was mandatory, except that he spend his night in his cell, and even this could be masked with good intentions: it was climate controlled and the lighting was optimized for Cardassian comfort.  Garak gave a long, huffing exhale through his nose every time he walked into it; every time he found it more satisfactory than he deserved.

One evening, over a meal he was taking privately in the corner of the dining room, Officer Chey greeted him, stepping into his peripheral vision and politely nodding her head at him, waiting to be acknowledged in return.

"Officer," Garak said blandly, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Whenever you're finished eating," she said, in a professional but ultimately too-soft tone, "I can install the reading materials you asked for on your cell computer.  I have two of the volumes on data-rod, and the third is unfortunately out on loan to the facility in Dahkur province."

Garak shrugged, but thanked her for her efforts.

"Two is plenty, for now," he said.  "I'd better parse them out, I suppose.  To keep myself entertained."

Chey tipped her head sideways at this, and rather than argue, Garak took a moment to silently admire the mass of braids all curled together on the top of her head.  He could count those someday, he thought, if he ran out of other things to do during his sentence.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"I expect I'll be here a very long time," Garak replied, separating out each word.

"Well... we don't have Opting Trials, but we do have service vouchers."

"That sounds truly repulsive," Garak said.  "What is it?"

With another nod, Chey asked permission to take the chair beside him, so they could converse 'as friends.'  Garak agreed to that, but not to what came after.

"In exchange for showing you've bettered yourself and are committed to making a lasting change," she explained, "the warden will note your contributions, have them approved by a militia officer, and then allow you to leave when you feel ready.  Voluntarily."

" _Ugh_ ," said Garak, setting his cheek down against one hand, smushing his face into showing further displeasure.

He wondered why they were so shocked when he _voluntarily_ admitted himself to the prison in the first place.  Surely he learned his lesson in the concept.

"That can't be that different than what you're used to," Chey said back.  "Instead of volunteering for your State, you're volunteering for the people who live in it."

"One's service isn't even required to be served _on Bajor?_ I would far prefer that; I have already tried contributing to relief efforts on Cardassia."

She smiled at him.

"We always _hope_ that's the choice our inmates will make on their own."

Even in winning her approval - _especially_ in winning her approval - Garak could not win his one objective: finding absolution.  He had to do it the Bajoran way; he knew Bajorans had an anger, a _hunger_ , but he would not find it here.

So between his reading of rented data-rods - learning about starvation death figures and wrongful internments without the veil of Cardassian propaganda - and his community service - refortifying the damaged hard-drives of Bajoran census data, he found what he was looking for.

Not in the census itself - in that, he found only satisfaction at using his skills.  But through reading the Bajoran literature and repairing their mainframes, he found himself on the warden's recommendation list for acquittal.  From there, his name cycled through the watch-lists of the provisional government agents, and at last it was cleared by none other than Colonel Kira, who held the highest rank in the sector at the time.  

She called him just to gloat, and it cheered him because he knew he would have done the same to her, if the circumstances were somehow reversed.

"Who knew you were so handy with Occupation-era technology?" she asked, voice lilting over the speaker.

Garak stayed quiet.

"But really, Garak," she went on, "it sounds like you were a model citizen.  I'm happy to sign off on your voucher."

Kira was rarely one to break a promise, and while Garak retired from the call with a melancholy feeling sinking into his chest, Kira sent the transmission immediately to his cell-computer.  There was a sense of pride in the font of her signature, even though Garak knew it was nothing more than a digitally-applied stamp. He read it over and waited for the ever-efficient Chey to come and release him; it would need to be done before the next of his regularly scheduled activities began.  For now, he was free to sleep and formulate his plan. But then, when she came to open his cell, he would be free to wander, and free to be caught.

***

His visitation permit for Bajor had months left of clearance on it, when Chey relieved him of his sentence and replaced it with an awkward farewell.  He kept none of the provisions she gave him on his way out; he had no use for the clean set of clothes which had been mechanically approximated to his size, nor the certificate of acquittal, nor the data chip with credits for a shuttle trip home.  All he took with him was his PADD, which he had brought from the very beginning, and left in storage with Officer Chey during the course of his sentence.

 _Finally_ , for once, everything was falling into place, and he did not need to lie to get what he wanted.  Garak felt _brilliant_ , if a bit hungry.

His plan was to wander the streets, still wearing the drab beige tunic and numbered wristband from the penitentiary; his plan was to be _caught_.  

He gravitated toward the outskirts of the city in Rakantha, where he could still shelter himself beneath richly-laden trees to avoid direct sunlight while still being present to passersby.  Garak wondered when Bajorans, on the whole, had become so polite and restrained in their showing of distrust.

Some asked if he needed help, or transportation to a medical facility.  Others offered food, water, and scraped-off lines from their own physical currency.  Garak wondered what he should do with the curl of ore in his hand, and decided to take it to a temple's offering post; surely no one Bajoran would argue with him depositing it there.  

Of course, there were plenty of Bajorans who passed him silently.  Some would mumble quietly into communication devices as they stepped by, and Garak was thrilled.  When calls were put in to the authorities, his name would come up perfectly clear, and he would be left alone.  At least for a reasonable period of time - maybe a day or two - and that was all Garak needed. A day or two of suspicion, warranted or not.  

Along with being newly generous, Garak thought with a sense of relief, the Bajorans were a diurnal people.  For the most part, after the sunlight faded, he could walk toward the temple and curl up to sleep within the garden's rotunda.  Its open archways were rarely blockaded, and the groundskeeper went home long before Garak arrived for the night.

The planetary authority had no interest in him, Garak comfortably thought to himself, the radicals did.  He let himself sleep, unworried by capture, dreaming pleasantly of the set'iels he knew from the Occupation, at least some of which were still in operation.  

They were established by the Bajorans, poverty-stricken and emaciated, to sell everything but their dignity; they never lost that by choice.  While Garak had never visited one, himself, he admired the way they ensnared figures of power, tempting them inside the door with information on yet-untapped Bajoran reserves.  He had heard, too, from an unfortunate and suddenly one-eyed associate within the Order, that Bajorans would offer _themselves_ on rare occasions, only to take their Cardassian companion somewhere private for retribution.  They left marks on their visitors, as if coating them in the proverbial honey, allowing them to go free with the expectation they would only find themselves stuck to all manner of unpleasant personal effects, later. 

But Garak's associate had come back with invaluable information; it was tempting, but Garak knew himself too well to volunteer to visit a _honeytrap_ on his own.  He had a complicated relationship with his own pain and the suffering of others, and he did not expect to make it out again without feeling deeply conflicted.

But now, without the obstruction of his wire and his Order affiliation, and without the Bajorans starving and collapsing at Cardassian command, he could go.  He only needed to wait for the trap to come to him; that was how they worked, now.

***  

 _Was it selfish?_ Garak thought, as he was hauled into the dark, misty back-room of the set'iel.  He could see better than the Bajorans could, in the darkness, but that did not mean he was comfortable; it only meant he struggled enough to dislodge his blindfold.  His captors did not like that.

Was it selfish?  

If his wire had been inside him and functioning at its original capacity, it would have been _sick_.  Even now, he hoped his wishes had not been misconstrued by the guard at the door, as two of her comrades dragged him inside.  

He had spent a little over a week as a vagrant, milling around the city-center by day and sleeping within the confines of the monastery by night.  Just as he hoped for - for almost as long as he had spent away from the station - he was captured and given a new purpose; he never felt his best work was done _voluntarily_.  Tain might have disagreed with him, but that only helped to fuel his insistence, now.

His captors took him from a restful sleep in the garden to a fretful panic in an underground cavern.  Two sets of arms deposited him in front of a doorway - stone, from what Garak could feel with the occasional brush of the side of his arm - and he was collected by a different team of Bajorans.  All of it was conducted in secrecy, as he was led from the entrance to a mechanical lift, which brought the group down, down into the depths of a disused mine.

From Garak's reading, he new the mine shaft was abandoned even before the Cardassian Withdrawal; it would have been robbed of all its riches and nutrients only a decade or less after being dug open.  This location could very well have existed as a set'iel for almost as long as Garak had been alive.

There were three set'iel members in attendance when Garak shook free of his blindfold, looking humble and dangerous, the same as he always managed to look.  

One was a woman, aged more by anger than revolutions around the Bajoran suns, short and shriveled over a walking stick.  Then there was a man, middle aged and wearing his hair long and messy, letting it tangle itself in the gaps of his loosely-woven shawl, as if it made no difference to him what might happen.  Finally, a younger woman, with narrow dark eyes and a single hand - her other arm stopped abruptly, covered by a gash to indicate a poor attempt at field surgery. The scar was thick and purple, mottled with dead skin in the middle, and Garak wondered if it was selfish for him not to ask her name when she showed him inside.

"Obsidian Order... usually we need to look a bit harder for guests like you," she gruffly explained, cupping both of Garak's wrists together in her single hand, which was strengthened by its solitude.

"Mm," Garak said, nodding.  They easily could have scanned his face or his fingerprints, or even plucked a hair or a scale while he was distracted by his blindfold.  This was a wonderfully efficient organization, Garak thought, well worth the delay in visiting.

"What if he's got a wire," the old woman asked, flatly, not specifying which kind.  "He wouldn't be so easy to capture, unless he wanted to come in. Guests don't _want_ to come in here, anymore."

Garak had no doubt this woman remembered the height of set'iel popularity.  But he also knew it was best to stay quiet in a preliminary meeting, so respective roles could work themselves out.  He had done the same to Doctor Bashir, when they first met, to decide the best strategy to take with him throughout the course of their relationship, beginning to end.

Had he been selfish?

"He was the one from Tress Penitentiary," the young woman replied, gesturing to Garak's armband.  "He could be an escaped war criminal."

"I see that," the old woman said, with a shrug.  "Put him there, then."

With some assistance from her quiet male counterpart, the young woman brought Garak to a chair in the corner of the room.  The seat of it was cold, and so was the stone floor beneath Garak's thin-soled shoes. Smoke and steam swirled around the upper levels of the wine shaft, arriving in equal part from malfunctioning machinery and from cracks in the rock itself.  Garak coughed and dusted his hands, which the man then took and fastened behind his back, around the chair.

The older woman maintained her distance, giving silent directions to the younger woman, who tipped Garak's chin up, then down, letting his eyes catch the single beam of flickering light from far, far above them.

"Have I seen you before?" the old woman asked, squinting.  

"No," Garak amiably replied.  "No, I never did have the pleasure."

"Sick," she spat.

"It is, isn't it?" Garak said, in the same tone as before.

The old woman nodded, and the young woman placed a well-deserved punch along the side of Garak's cheek, using her numbed, amputated limb to cut into the unguarded flesh between Garak's aural and orbital ridges.  Ridges could be broken, and part of him was grateful she had not hit either one. But her arm came away mottled with purplish blood; it was not hers.

The man interceded, running an outdated scanner over Garak's head and chest.  Oh, it was brilliant, Garak thought, using a perfectly functional detection device that was too old to have its readings intercepted on a channel the provisional government might frequent.  Or, Garak grinned to himself, it was some kind of mind-reading device, as the man voiced a similar impression:

"The provisional government doesn't approve of our doing this," he spoke clearly.  "There can be no possible recourse, legally, if you are to seek it afterward."

"Good," said Garak.  

Garak's fate was decided on silently, and the man set down his scanner and stepped around the back of the chair.  He then removed his shawl and used it to bind Garak's neck in place, tying a knot through two gaps in the wicker chair-frame.

This felt more effective already, Garak thought, because it felt like Tain.  Oh, he had learned _almost_ every lesson that was forced on him in solitude and darkness.  None about sentiment, but all the rest.

"Set the timer," the old woman ordered.

***

The old woman did not specify a duration, but her comrades did not need to know, and Garak did not deserve to know.  He lost track of how long he spent tied to the chair in the uncomfortably humid darkness, wishing he could have the luxury of even _sweating_ , while his supervisors did that in addition to drinking and eating and excusing themselves from the room as often as they pleased.  When his stomach began to churn audibly, the young woman crouched in front of him, bringing her eyes to meet his, unafraid. It felt like Tain, teaching the lesson Garak would go on to force on Doctor Parmak at the height of his own career.  It felt sickening, and exactly right.

"Fasting began as a cry to the Prophets," the woman explained, "until the Cardassians mocked it and made it mandatory, for a week at a time.  We were permitted to eat for only several hours after each turn, and _so many of us_ made ourselves ill with the newfound freedom."

Garak nodded, and retched.

"We don't enforce that second part, anymore," the man added, decidedly unhelpful at this juncture.

Garak ducked his chin down, in order to wipe his mouth against his chest.  His arms were still tied behind him, and they were sore.

"You'll need water, first," the old woman said.  "Cut the back, loosen the front."

Mercifully, Garak felt his wrists being freed, and when he lurched forward, he was met by both of the young woman's arms - the handless one catching him like a bar, and the other providing the promised water.  It must have been days, Garak thought, as he learned the lesson and sipped it slowly. She loosened the shawl around his neck, enough for him to swallow without gagging.

"When you can speak, you will speak your crimes," the old woman went on, over the dramatic sounds of Garak's gulping and swallowing air in between his sips of water.

He cleared his throat and nodded.  His neck ached with each movement, no matter how small.

"Cardassians may believe in execution now, of their own kind," the young woman began anew, eyes blazing with anger, "but they rarely exercised this option with their Bajoran laborers - people who had done no wrong."

"Oh," Garak groaned, " _oh_."

"That's right," she replied.  "But, unlike your forefathers, I won't find any satisfaction in doing this..."

She slapped his face, and rather than the pleasantly strong intervention of his wire, he had to rely on his own thoughts and discipline.  He thought about the nature of regret, and of sentiment, and of how the two intertwined in situations like this one. He thought about this for as long as he could take - and as long as the woman could take - before she backed away from him, voiced a quiet apology, and helped him to sit back down in his chair for the night.

"There's no need to apologize," Garak moved to assure her, but his voice came out hoarse and unfriendly.

"You can start your confession tomorrow," she said.

She shrugged and stepped out of his line of vision.  

He did not fall asleep by choice, but by the dulling effect of his hunger, rocking him to sleep like waves against the side of a boat, only crashing when he was too exhausted to feel them.

***

"He's _where_?" Bashir spluttered into his comm-badge, shocked and hurrying to set aside his tea before any more of it could spill.  

The tray beside his operating area was free, and he sighed to himself as the mug settled down into a little ring of its own contents, having rolled down the side as he fumbled with it.  He was not overseeing a patient - or he would not be drinking tea in the first place - but he did not blame the Bajorans for the pride they took in keeping their new equipment clean. In fact, he shared it, and made sure to wipe the stain up with the cuff of his own off-duty tunic, rather than the borrowed Bajoran medical smock he wore over it.  New assignments always made him nervous, and it manifested itself in casual clumsiness.

"It's called a _set'iel_ ," Kira explained again.  "I don't know when he got there, or _how_ , but I received a distress signal from the coordinates of an abandoned mine in Rakantha.  It can't be anything _but_ a honeytrap."

"Honey...?" Bashir asked, deeply uncomfortable with the translation his device was giving him.  "What did you say it was, exactly?"

"They started during the Occupation as a resistance group," Kira said.  "But they're illegal, now. They capture Cardassians for questioning, or at least they did when we were at war with each other."

"So Garak's hurt, and he sent out a distress signal?"

"I don't know who sent it, but it did mention his name."

Bashir knew that such openness would be unusual for Garak, unless he was intentionally fishing for Bashir's company...

"I want you to go pick him up," Kira added.  "Take a team with you, evacuate the set'iel, tend to the wounded.  Consider it your first assignment, Doctor."

Even after eight years of association, Bashir never could shake the feeling that Kira epitomized the expanding frontier.  Without the Federation clouding his view, insisting on changing them and distilling their principles, he was happy to do as he was told.  Dizzy on a mixture of excitement and worry, Bashir brought together a team and prepared to move to the new coordinates.

***

They discharged him discreetly, efficiently, _cleanly_.  It felt like Tain, and it felt complete.

Garak awoke outside, surrounded by charred shrubs and broken rocks, some indefinable distance from the _set'iel_ itself.  They carried him out while he was barely conscious, and left him with a flask of water and a clean cloak for modesty.

He could recall the beating he received, for mentioning his past crimes.  All of it was justified, and as he raised himself into a sitting position, he realized all of the session's evidence remained.  When he lifted his arm and dipped his head into the loose front of his cloak to inspect it, he saw a line of bruises along his scales.  The back of his hand was cut deeply, tender to the touch, with the blood deep inside it still tacky. They must have moved him out in a hurry... Garak remembered taking a blow to the face, then several to the chest, and then he recalled the woman stepping back from him and apologizing.  It was better that they removed him before she could become too affected, Garak thought. She felt bad, doing this to a volunteer, a man who spent the harrowing depth of the Occupation enduring exile of his own. When she asked, that was what he told her. He did not blame her for feeling bad; he felt that way, too.

But, in all reality, he was old and out-of-practice, and his starved, restrained body was not evenly matched to the punches of a trained Bajoran.  It was not selfish, it was for the best.

He had no desire to die there, nor where he sat now.  All he wanted was to learn and to have change forced upon himself, the only way he found effective.  It _hurt_.

He made an attempt at crawling forward, studying the placement of the sun and the shadows on the ground in front of him.  Once he worked out his location, he could locate an ambivalent-if-not-friendly Bajoran establishment and send a transmission.  He could be found, if he wanted to be.

And, for one of the first times in his life, he could be found if he did _not_ want to be.  Garak had hardly taken two steps forward when he felt a soft touch on his back.  His _back -_ not his shoulder - and before he turned, the visitor announced himself.

"Garak?" Julian said, calmly.  "It's me, Julian."

Garak scoffed but offered very little protest, as Bashir turned him around and fussed over his cloak.  First, it was too thin and too loose, but when he reached to tighten it, it somehow became too constricting for the wounds underneath.

"Where the _hell_ have you been?" Bashir asked.

"I assume you've been tracking me, my dear," Garak replied, glumly.

Bashir shook his head and kept his hold on Garak's shoulder, as he addressed his comm badge.  Garak had to squint through the sunlight to see it - Bashir was wearing civilian clothes, and a Bajoran badge.  He kept his confusion to himself, and let it dissolve away as he did, leaving it behind when he rematerialized in a medical facility.

"That _set'iel_ has been shut down, you'll be pleased to know. Kira’s orders," Bashir explained.  "What's gotten into you, begging to be beaten up like this? What could that _possibly_ have taught you?"

Bashir continued walking past the line of recovery cots and toward a staircase.  Garak could tell, from the architecture, that they were still on Bajor, as he followed Bashir down the spiraling passageway and into a darker, warmer room.  The walls were plastered with religious imagery, appearing on large frescoes and draped tapestries. A basin was set up in the corner, outfitted with a single tap and a selection of balms, for baptism.

"Get in," Bashir said, giving up on receiving answers to his previous questions.

"I highly doubt I would be allowed to set foot in that," Garak said, wrinkling up his nose at the scent of the lotion, as if this would help his case.

"I'll clear it with the Kai," Bashir said sarcastically.  "I don't care.   _Get in_."

With Bashir's assistance, Garak did so, clambering over the edge and only shedding his cloak after the water had been switched on.  Bashir slid aside the tray of ceremonial balms, replacing them with his own selection of antiseptic and analgesic ointments. The water ran hot and steamy, and while it shocked Garak at first, he found himself reclining against the tub wall once his aching body adjusted, taking the warmth to balance the pain.

"I had no desire to press charges," Garak said.  "They made it quite clear it would be pointless."

"Shh," Bashir was determined to remain above distraction.  "It looks like this side is still bleeding, lift your arm."

Garak winced as Julian found the afflicted spot - a long slice along the side of his rib-cage - and smeared it with disinfectant before sealing it with his ever-present dermal regenerator.  

"And," Garak went on, undeterred, "I found them quite helpful."

"You may have a concussion," Bashir said.  He trailed one finger in front of Garak's line of vision, slowing his movement as Garak's eyes glazed and lagged behind.  

Bashir reached in to remove Garak's borrowed cloak, tossing it aside before the water could soak it completely.  With this done, he leaned in more closely over Garak, studying his vitals by pressing a small scanner to his temple.  While it took its reading, Garak took in his surroundings - the soft purple walls, the flicker of what must have been candles installed in pillars, the radiating steam, Bashir's face...

When the scanner confirmed Bashir's diagnosis, he prepared a specialized hypospray and released it over the same spot, shortening Garak's recovery time dramatically.  Garak blinked, his eyelids heavy, but ultimately was able to follow Bashir's hand with his full attention, when this was asked of him again.

" _Now_ ," Bashir said firmly, "what the hell were you thinking?"

Garak slid lower into the water, primarily for modesty, but also because it felt _nice_.  He ignored the fact it might be selfish, purely because an old friend was demanding it of him, for the sake of his wellness.  

"I was behaving selfishly," Garak replied.  "You won't understand it, from a Federation point of view."

"Tell me anyway,” Bashir shrugged. “I resigned."

"Oh, that's interesting, why not tell me th--"

Bashir interrupted.

"That's not important right now.  I gave it two years of my best work - after my father's trial - and it... had nothing else to give me.  Go ahead, _tell me_."

Garak thought all of this sounded familiar, in a not-completely-comfortable way.  He had thought of his own father often, in recent weeks, as well as receiving dues equal to those his people had dealt.

"Maybe you would understand," Garak said, voice brittle but still sharp around the edges.  "I needed my behavior corrected, and my mistakes acknowledged. There was no _way_ I could 'move on' - as the relief centers phrase it - if I was always aware of ulterior motives.  If I were, say, mending clothes for orphans, or distributing meals to less-mobile neighbors, I would never be doing so without considering how it might _benefit me_."

He hung his head, and the act revealed another patch of roughened skin, which Bashir reached for at once.  Soon the scales were straightened out again, smooth and clean with the aid of Bashir's regenerator, then a handful of warm water.  Feeling relieved, Garak let out a sigh.

"Well..." Bashir began, slowly.  "It _could_ benefit you, if you were feeling good about, you know, doing _good deeds_.  I mean that’s... kind of why I went into medicine.”

They were quiet for a short while, leaving Bashir to finish hunting out all of Garak's cuts and bruises.  At one point, he had to reach into the water to staunch a wound along Garak's thigh, and Garak cast his eyes downward, embarrassed.

"You don't need to... go out and get beat up, before you can learn to feel better," Bashir continued.  "Your injuries were psychological... This is something you could see a counselor for."

"See a counselor?  Yes, I know how well that's worked out for you."

"Not 'see' as in 'date,' Garak, I _know_ you know what I meant."

Garak tried to look playful, jesting, but his face was still stinging too much for the finished look to be effective.  

“So...” Bashir made an another attempt at conversation, “what did you learn, in this _selfish_ endeavor of yours?”

Generally, when Garak met Bashir’s eyes, he was about to tell either the truth, or a well-practiced stand-in lie. Microscopic variations in his tone were left for Bashir to sort out which he was being given; Garak would not have made it so difficult if the man were not so fond of puzzles.

“I learned the starvation figures in Rakantha province alone were higher than I had been taught.”

“That’s good. Not... not the figures, of course, but that you were able to hear about it. What else?”

“Set’iels are every bit as dangerous and intriguing as I’d heard they were.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” Bashir replied, dutifully blotting a sponge along a gash in Garak’s cheek.

“And I do believe I’ve... learned to live with myself,” Garak concluded. “Or, at the very least, with your remarkable tendency to find me when I’m in need of a lecture and a surgical procedure.”

“Oh, these’ll heal on their own,” Bashir said, softly patting Garak’s arm.  "I was able to get to you in time, thank goodness."

“Yes, you were…”

Bashir stirred the water with two fingers, dipping them idly into the basin, having finished with all of Garak’s wounds.  Then, Bashir helped him from the tub and to a private bed where he could sleep and recover his strength.

When all was said and all was done, they remained together in that hut on Bajor for months, backing the relief efforts from a distance Garak found comfortable.  It felt much better this way, where Garak could pay back contributions without worrying about manipulating the recipients, where Bashir could encourage him and help him to feel at home even among the Bajoran crew that Bashir commanded.  

Yes, when all was said and all was done, Garak felt better than he had in decades.  



End file.
